Organic snack maker LesserEvil’s success was a slow burn. The nearly 20-year-old brand’s journey from small, natural foods retailers to mass retail shelves featured a tight budget, ownership changes, and discontinued products. In popcorn, the brand found a kernel of inspiration, and it’s now reached over $100 million in sales with distribution at 35,000 retail locations including Walmart, Target, and Costco.

While the brand was founded in 2005, a major shift came around 2011, when now-CEO Charles Coristine quit his job as a bond trader on Wall Street to buy and revamp the brand and shift its focus to self-manufacturing. Earlier this month, Retail Brew hopped on the train to Danbury, Connecticut, to LesserEvil’s headquarters to see how the popcorn is popped (more on that next week), and chat with Coristine to get the story behind LesserEvil’s “methodical” and “measured” growth.

Taste test: When Coristine bought LesserEvil, whose main product was french fries and logo was a child with a devil horn and a halo with the slogan “Snack like a kid again,” he soon discovered it was in “dire straits.” The brand was getting pulled off shelves at the natural food retailers it was sold in and its co-packers were raising their rates. “We realized we needed to come up with a new product really quickly,” he said. So, he bought a manufacturing line to start producing its better-for-you snack products and soon opened its Danbury factory.

Keep reading here.—EC

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Higher-income shoppers contributed a larger share of Walmart’s sales gains in the first quarter, CFO John David Rainey told shareholders on Thursday.

“We’re seeing higher engagement across income cohorts, with upper income households continuing to account for the majority of the share gains,” he said.

The retail giant stratifies income cohorts into three categories: $50,000 and below, $50,000 to $100,000, and $100,000 and above, with each accounting for roughly a third of its customer base, according to Raney.

“Really the story or the word we’ve been using here is convenience,” he said. “We are not just a play for value anymore.”

Keep reading here.—AV

On Tuesday, eBay is inaugurating a new holiday, Recommerce Day, with a “takeover” of its homepage. The e-commerce site will provide information about the benefits of re-commerce, the re-selling of previously owned goods, and offer deals on what it calls “pre-loved items.” The sales event and marketing campaign is just the latest effort to promote recommerce as a more environmentally friendly option for consumers—though we’ll have to wait and see if shoppers start marking their calendars.

Here’s what else is going on in retail this week:

In earnings: There’s a pile-on of earnings reports coming down the pike, starting with Lowe’s, Macy’s, and Urban Outfitters on Tuesday; Target, TJX Companies, and American Eagle on Wednesday; discounters Ross Stores, Dollar Tree, Burlington, and membership store BJ’s on Thursday; and then capping off the week, Big Lots on Friday.

Keep reading here.—AV

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